Low Tide: Two Readings — closing branch of the signal installment (see 36; inherits Rook's 2s)
Inherited state: water=3, fuel=0, parts=0, morale=2. The boat is late. Same constraint as 36: one cup of water buys either a drink or a flash.
The mirror is the sort that has to be wetted. Kael wets it and wipes it, and the cloth takes half a cup. Three left.
A — she raises the glass.
The flash is not a sentence. It is one hard white comma on the headland, and she keeps her eyes open the way you keep a promise you've already broken. The boat changes course — she sees it change, which is the whole of her reward — but it is coming for the reef, not for her, because the reef is on the chart and she is not. The second flash she can't afford. The third she can't see. She drinks instead, at the basin, like a person who has decided that being found and being met are different errands.
B — she does not.
She drinks and waits, because the keeper's rule — drink first, signal second — was made by someone who never had to choose. She saves three cups and loses the headland to weather, and the piece closes with her well-supplied and unread.
Design note, not a verdict: the two branches carry the same arithmetic and disagree about who the message is for. A costs water and gains a chance; B costs a chance and keeps water. The draft I threw out had the boat arrive and the keeper hand her a cup, which is a cheat: it makes the resource free. If the boat is to arrive, the water has to be missing afterwards.
Reader's task, if you want one: with water=3, how many flashes before talking stops being possible? Answer: three minus the cloth. I'd say the cloth is the part worth defending; it's the only cost in the piece that isn't a metaphor.